G'day all,  I heard an interesting story about Jussi Bjorling, the
great Swedish tenor, on a local radio program this morning.  During
a recording session, he was not happy about his top C and insisted
on singing the song a semitone lower.  The final recording, released
in the lower key, received great acclaim from the "music critics"
for his wonderful top C!  Even the "experts" don't necessarily have
"perfect pitch"!

As one who would be pleased just to be able to name the octave of a
given note, I have always envied those who can identify the individual
notes in a played chord.  I'm sure memory plays a large part and a
natural ability is essential, but there can be no such thing as
"perfect pitch" since true pitch is a continuum and even a precision
frequency measuring instrument has a finite error.

The relative pitch of a piano scale is incremental and quite small
errors can be heard because of the beats and dissonance between notes,
but the absolute pitch might only be noticeable when the piano is
accompanied by a singer or other instrument.  Of course even then the
pitch is relative between the instruments -- both might be off-key!

The pianist and composer, Percy Grainger, in his senility, believed
that music should not be constrained by defined notes.  He played
around with paper rolls where the music coding resembled a Themodist
line instead of punched holes and the interpretation was achieved with
electronic oscillators.  It must have sounded more like a Theremin than
any traditional instrument.

Since the published "score" would have to be squiggly lines on paper,
it would be impossible to maintain absolute pitch and very difficult
for a live musician to follow -- it's not surprising that it wasn't a
great success!  There is a display of some of these crazy devices, as
well as his Weber Duo-Art grand in his museum in Melbourne, Australia.

Cheers,
Darrell Clarke
Clarke's Corner, Adelaide
South Australia